Peter Dunn is president of Pete the Planner, based in Carmel, Ind. His column appears weekly online and in The Indianapolis Star's Business & Jobs section on Sunday.

Written by

Peter Dunn

Two years ago, I came across a young married couple that was struggling financially. Tyler and Monique were suburbanites who had been married for about four years and lived in a house with a mortgage they could barely afford. Whereas I prefer that people keep their monthly mortgage payment around 25 percent of take-home pay, theirs hovered around 34 percent. They were unsurprisingly stressed.

But it was their transportation budget that had them in trouble. Tyler and Monique were spending 23 percent of their income on getting to and ...